


Rinse it all away, it will disappear down the drain eventually

by by_heart



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/by_heart/pseuds/by_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a routine. No, it’s a ritual. No matter what she’s doing that day or what time she manages to think about bed, the pattern is the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rinse it all away, it will disappear down the drain eventually

It’s a routine. No, it’s a ritual. No matter what she’s doing that day or what time she manages to think about bed, the pattern is the same.

Shower; hair first, so that the conditioner can soak in while she does everything else. That high pony she always wore for Cheerios made her head hurt so often, she would spend more time massaging her scalp and relieving the tension in her neck. But the short hair was so much easier to manage and she loved how much less time she had to spend dealing with it.   
Body next; a nice loofa to scrub off any remaining debris of the day. Some days, it was sweat from glee rehearsal, some days it was cigarette smoke from standing by the back doors of the school, avoiding going home for just a little bit longer, some days it was just the perfume she put on that morning. No matter what it was though, she scrubbed. She was pretty sure that somehow, washing away the grime of the day was therapeutic, like it always made her think that she was finally clean. She knew she never would be, not really. Not with everything she’d managed to screw up in seventeen years. But she tries anyway.  
Hair removal; underarms were a must every day. She couldn’t stand the way it made her feel to know she had any trace of hair under her arms; it just wasn’t pretty. Legs didn’t have to be done every day, but she never let it go more than two days, because she liked wearing dresses and looking so feminine, and that meant her legs would show and she wouldn’t have people staring at her legs with visible hair on them, even if it was blonde enough to get by with. Bikini area wasn’t essential, but it needed to be done at least once or twice a week. Not that anybody would see that part of her body. But she did wear bathing suits and shorts in the summer by the pool, and really, she just preferred that everything be neat and tidy so that she wouldn’t have to worry about getting something drastic – like a bikini wax – done whenever summer rolled around.   
Hair; rinsed and combed through to prevent tangles. Everything was done.

But sometimes she stood there, just a minute or two longer, with the temperature turned way up, burning slightly as it hit her skin. She wished some days she could stay there forever. But then, she might miss something.

Shower off, towel dry. Before her parents split, she would dress in the bathroom, because walking six feet down the hall in her towel to her room was not lady like and not proper with any men in the house. She always felt sticky and not quite done whenever she dressed in the bathroom; all the steam in there made it impossible to get completely dry and her clothes would stick to her skin a little bit. Living alone with her mom changed things. Even if her mom had mentioned once when she walked into Quinn’s room while she was getting dressed that she had seen her own daughter naked before, Quinn still kept the towel wrapped up around her chest until her bedroom door was locked. She needed that bit of privacy and modesty. She knew that women would say they lost all modesty after having a baby because the process is so very not modest or decent, but that didn’t change her. She knew that several doctors and her mom and Puck and Mercedes had watched her give birth, but she would never willingly put herself on display.  
Towel drops on the chair by her desk. She lets her skin dry in the comfortable air of the room as she pulls her pajamas out of the dresser. It’s cool outside, so perhaps something a little cozy for the night will do. She puts a pair of pink flowered bottoms and a white baby doll t-shirt on the end of the bed. Grabbing the bottle of body lotion from the night stand, she perches on the edge of the bed.

Lotion; it belongs everywhere. But particularly, her legs are treated kindly because of afore mentioned dresses that show her legs. Then arms, especially her palms from where they rest on a keyboard in three classes. Back, chest, stomach, gently around the bellybutton piercing that is still just a little tender, the piercing she keeps even though she doesn’t know why. The piercing that nobody but Kurt knows about. He caught a glimpse of the shining metal when a slushie on the floor made her lose her footing, and he happened to be the arms that caught her just before she hit the floor ungracefully. He swore he wouldn’t say anything about it, and hey, she knew he could keep a secret for a friend (if that’s what they really were).  
Pajamas; soft, delicate, expensive – purchased when her father was still in the picture. T-shirt over her head, hair shaken out roughly. Bottoms, with a little bow in the drawstring. Neat and tidy bed covers pulled back on one side.

She turns off her light and slides in between the sheets and sighs. It’s the only time she feels peaceful, like for two minutes, she’s not s screw up, not a delinquent, not a kid who made bad choices, not the alias she had spoiled – because she already ditched Lucy for Quinn, there was no other name to jump into and mold into a new being. She was stuck with Quinn, and like it or not, Quinn was stuck with her. She didn’t have another mask to hide behind, but at the end of the day, she had peace and the comfort of knowing that somewhere out there, eleven other kids cared about her, at least a little, and that was more than she had before anything else in her life.


End file.
